The Night We Met
by merlin56
Summary: As Tarrlok and Amon leave Republic City on a speedboat, Tarrlok reflects on how they got to this point, and acts – decisively. [Inspired by the Youtube video, "Noatak and Tarrlok The Night We Met"]


**_Inspired by the Youtube video, "Noatak and Tarrlok | The Night We Met" _**

**[ watch?v=7k4lauK6G7k&list=PLyddBqYOo5YUBdKOMWdJIpbPR-q7yxQf9&index=2&t=0s]**

**As Tarrlok and Amon leave Republic City on a speedboat, Tarrlok reflects on how they got to this point, and acts – decisively.**

_I put together this fanfiction and uploaded it very swiftly, and I may want to make some edits later. If so, I'll be marking any significant edits as "Major Edit 1" or something like that._

He felt bedraggled as they sped away from Republic City on a speedboat. Really, spending a good span of time locked in a cell without even basic amenities would do that to you.

Tarrlok looked at the stranger piloting the boat. A man who Tarrlok had known only as Amon, who he had thought of only as an ideologue lunatic or a grasping opportunist. Either way, the man who would pave the way to Tarrlok's own acclaim as the saviour of Republic City.

All that had changed when he had confronted Amon head-on for the first time. He had basked overconfidently, securely, in the knowledge that his bloodbending prowess would bring Amon and his lackeys to their knees with no more resistance than he might squash a bug.

But while the lackeys indeed crumpled to the floor, Amon had been stopped for a mere moment, then proceeded as if nothing happened. It was then that Tarrlok had felt dawning terror at this impossible monstrosity of a man. Later, when he felt the familiar bloodbending grip from decades past, he had realised the impossible truth – that Amon was his disappeared older brother Noatak.

Yet, that wasn't completely true. Tarrlok had known his older brother – Noatak – as the kind older brother who had played with him, cared for him, even protected him from their father's rages. But Amon and Noatak were two different people, separated by decades of life experience. Though Tarrlok and Amon were "brothers", the word masked an inescapable truth – they were strangers to each other. Tarrlok knew nothing of Amon, and Amon knew nothing of Tarrlok. Their lives had diverged when Amon had made that one critical decision.

He was jolted out of his own thoughts by the voice of the stranger. "The two of us, together again," said Amon – or should he say Noatak? – with relish, "there's nothing we can't do." Amon seemed, he thought, to see this moment, their reunion, as a moment of rebirth, but Tarrlok rather felt otherwise. "Yes, Noatak", he replied, the empty agreement coming to his lips with ease.

"Noatak", the other man replied, "I had almost forgotten the sound of my own name". Perhaps, Tarrlok thought, because it's no longer who you are.

As they sped along, Tarrlok's thoughts changed tack. Really, he thought, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, what was there left for him? He had spent decades building himself up in Republic City, becoming a councilman of the ruling council and making a name for himself. With the uprising of the Equalist movement, he had thought that he would carve a name for himself forever in the annals of the city's history by squashing the movement with a decisive hand. And now all of that had unravelled, and he was travelling with a madman who had terrorised the same city he had governed, a brother he no longer knew.

Listlessly, he surveyed the speedboat he was in. The Equalist shock gloves, that they had used to (heh) equalise the playing field against the benders they fought, caught his eye. A dangerous notion was born in his head in that moment, and Tarrlok realised what he had to do. He'd lost everything he ever had, and his madman of a brother had to be stopped. Really, it was two birds with one stone.

As he put on the glove, he reflected on the sheer irony of it. He had wanted everlasting fame as the hero of Republic City, but no one would ever discover his moment of noble heroism in taking out his older brother.

In order to not alert the other man to his actions, Tarrlok moved slowly and methodically, unscrewing the engine cap deliberately and putting it aside. Even as he held his gloved hand over the engine, he couldn't resist indulging in one final line.

"It'll be just like the good old days," he muttered. Tarrlok, of course, didn't believe, no, _couldn't _believe it, given what he was just about to do. But perhaps he unknowingly revealed the fondest wish of his own heart, to return to the good old days with his kind older brother Noatak. He kept his eyes pinched tightly shut, perhaps in order to avoid looking at his own act of suicide.

He felt one final moment of regret that they could never return to those days, and then everything went black.


End file.
